Democratizing Educational Innovation and Improvement: The Policy Contexts of Improvement Research in Education. CPRE Working Paper No. 21-03

Consortium for Policy Research in Education. University of Pennsylvania, 3440 Market Street Suite 560, Philadelphia, PA 19104. Tel: 215-593-0700; Fax: 215-573-7914; e-mail: [email protected]; Web site: http://www.cpre.org

Y

31

Educational Innovation; Educational Improvement; Educational Policy; Educational Change; Democratic Values; Public Education; Educational Research; Elementary Secondary Education; Educational Resources; Commercialization; Educational History; Educational Legislation; Federal Legislation; Educational Quality; Disabilities; Equal Education; Students with Disabilities; Vocational Education; Technical Education; Academic Achievement; Educational Objectives; Academic Standards; Reading; Federal Aid; Federal Programs; Desegregation Litigation; School Desegregation; Court Litigation; Civil Rights Legislation

Elementary and Secondary Education Act; Every Student Succeeds Act 2015; Education for All Handicapped Children Act; Individuals with Disabilities Education Act; Vocational Education Act 1963; Carl D Perkins Vocational Education Act 1984; Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act 2018; Goals 2000; Reading Excellence Act; No Child Left Behind Act 2001; Race to the Top; Brown v Board of Education; Lau v Nichols; Civil Rights Act 1964 Title IV; Education Amendments 1972; Rehabilitation Act 1973 (Section 504); Milliken v Bradley; Doe v Plyler; Parents Involved in Community Schools v Seattle School District No 1

The aim of this essay is to advance understandings of current efforts to democratize disciplined approaches to educational innovation and improvement in the US and other countries, with a specific focus on the macro-level policy contexts of improvement research in education. In the US, earlier analyses examined these policy contexts from a contemporary perspective, with an emergent improvement movement in tension with an institutionalized evidence movement. By contrast, this essay provides an historical perspective through a "geological analysis" of US education reform. This analysis has the improvement movement atop macro-level policy contexts that are layers-deep, and as potentially integral to a public education enterprise that has been evolving for centuries: at the policy level, from "resource-forward" to "practice-forward" innovation and improvement; at the local level, from "school systems" to "education systems" to "learning systems." This analytic approach and framework suggest the need for a new discourse about efforts to democratize disciplined approaches to educational innovation and improvement in the US, as well as possibilities for comparative and international research examining parallel developments in other countries. This essay was prepared as a contribution to "The Foundational Handbook on Improvement Research in Education."

As Provided

2022

ED622609